Campground Racetrack Not Quite So Long, Oh the Doo Dah Day♪

In my last post I mentioned how IAM, her father and I had been near Mt. Equinox because we had been camping at Emerald Lake State Park in Vermont (for address, phone number and other information: http://www.vtstateparks.com/htm/emerald.htm). This post is kind of an addition to that last post, as a matter of fact it occurred on the same day.

Emerald Lake State Park has a number of nice camping spots where you can either pitch a tent on a well worn site with a fire pit, or you can drive your RV out to the same site and 'rough it', as the father of one of my other good friends still calls it. There is also a nice beach area where you can take out kayaks or canoes and row around Emerald Lake. When we went down for a bit the water was wonderfully clear and the bottom was smooth - definitely nice for someone who is squeamishly terrified of fish biting her toes.

IAM's father mentioned that there was a footpath that crossed under the road nearby and was supposed to go up the hill to the left to then look down on the lake. After a while we decided that we hadn't quite done enough walking that day after the fabled Red Trail at Mt. Equinox, so we dried off and headed down a path near the parking lot for the lake access. It led us under the road as promised and over a few creeks forded by little well build bridges.

The footpath it's self was definitely easy to follow as it was wide enough in parts to drive up it, and it more or less followed the road back up towards Emerald Lake (though the road its self was now farther away, below our right). Though we didn't know it (I learned this while writing this from looking at  Emerald Lake State Park brochures) this trail was called the Vista Trail and actually seems to have made a loop around the lake. Unfortunately we had gone probably only halfway along the section of the trail that parallels the road when we came to a post in the middle with a witty poem nailed to it. Why I didn't think to take a picture of this I honestly can't say, but it was something about a hiker who hiked all trails that he found, but when he got to this point he had to stop - the rest of the trail was apparently under maintenance.

So after a short debate whether to continue on or not, IAM's father got the better of our argument and we headed back. Since we didn't get to a point where the trail really looked down on Emerald Lake, we stopped at a point where the trees cleared enough and I was able to climb down a bit of rock face so that I could get a clearer shot. If you look down just a bit more you could see the road, it was really rather close. If we had a better view of the lake you could see that there are actually some islands right in the middle though which are pretty neat. The rest of the trail was usually sparsely lined with trees, but I took a couple just to show them.

So we may not have gotten a magnificent view of Emerald Lake from the Vista Trail, but we still got some cool views of it none the less. We were also able to take a nice, short, leisurely walk after our encounter with Mt. Equinox's Red Trail. Yet while we weren't able to take the whole Vista Trail at Emerald Lake State Park, it was probably for the better, again thanks to Mt. Equinox's Red Trail and our now tired feet.

On the way back over the last little footbridge we met this little guy. I was debating between giving you his picture or another mushroom picture ... I figured he'd be more interesting for you ;) Unfortunately IAM flicked him from his perch, so unless he can float, he is a sad little creature. Which reminds me, we have been seeing awesome all-black whooly-bears at our apartment this fall, as soon as I started posting again I've been on the look out for one to take a picture, hopefully they're not all gone already with the frost.

Lastly, since I will not be posting again before then, I would like to wish MD a happy early birthday!! :D:D
And to justify my title: please search the song 'Camptown Races' (or if you want a youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXE_PfcXtYE).
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Camping Leads to Hiking

Ah-ha! I'm honestly pretty proud of myself for remembering to post this week and not forgetting until next week :)

In late June last year a good friend (IAM), her father and I went camping at Emerald Lake State Park in Vermont. (For address, phone number and other information: http://www.vtstateparks.com/htm/emerald.htm). Honestly, I love camping - real camping where you learn to pitch tents and light fires - but the most camping my family did was in the back yard. Haha, the kind of camping where the kids run those orange extension cords out to the tent so they can watch TV or play Super Mario on the Nintendo when their parents are asleep back in the house. So anyways, yes this was camping out of your car but it was definitely camping. :)

Not too far away from the campsites, but it may take some more time to get from point A to point B as you go through Manchester, was Mt. Equinox (For address, phone number and other information: http://www.equinoxmountain.com/index.php). There is a gift shop at the base, and from what I gather a restaurant at the summit and on a usual day you can drive from one to the other after paying a toll at the gate. However, they had been doing some work on the building and some structures around the summit so we were told we wouldn't be able to drive completely to the summit - not wanting to loose out toll money they told us that there was an easy foot path that could take us from where we parked to the summit. 'Sounds good' we agreed, we paid our toll to the greedy toll machine, it lifted it's gate and we were on our way.

There are a couple places where you can stop along the way up, they have nice little look-outs and some have picnicking benches. But after a while we reached a point where there was a pull off to the right and a stop sign on a sawhorse in the middle of the road, we assumed that this was where out 'easy footpath to the summit' was so we pulled over and found our trail: the Red Trail.

I take a moment to pause here, if you have followed the link above, or if you are uncannily familiar with the trails at the summit of Mt. Equinox, you will know that this is not our 'easy footpath to the summit.' Nope, this is our (as per their trail map description) "expert 1.2 miles," angle-to-the-left trail. That line of rock that you see cutting through the center of the picture to the bottom right: that's the trail.

Which in all honesty it wasn't that bad, or that difficult of a trail, it's just that we were blindly expecting our 'easy footpath to the summit.' So we all had something easier and shorter in mind when, jean clad, we hopped out of the car ready to walk down the Red Trail. If you have decided to take a trip to Mt. Equinox, I would really encourage you to actually take this trail, just wear shoes with good tread, and clothes that you can move in. And if you are someone that isn't very limber or balanced I wouldn't suggest it, but if you think you can walk up crooked stairs well enough for about 20 minutes I think you could do it :)

Mt. Equinox's Red Trail puts you under the trees and right on the side of the mountain in a very cool way that lets you see both fauna and almost a treeline at the same time. Here I must admit that I have a fondness for finding and photographing mushrooms when hiking, and the Red Trail was full of them, I honestly felt like a kid in a candy store! But back to other things, it was honestly beautiful, the lighting that filtered down through the branches to illuminate the ground in spots was simply stunning. Seeing all of this natural beauty and stillness was definitely a gift from God that day; and definitely worth the surprise of the difficult trail.


The trail passed by some other trail heads and some pretty roasted looking coniferous trees, eventually coming to a lookout spot with a bench where you could look back towards Manchester with your back to the Mt. Equinox's summit.

When you move on again the trails kind of intermingle a little up here and flatten out. We finally wound our way back (in a U-turn from our lookout over Manchester) to the summit. While we were walking on these trails we encountered the most people and it seemed like all of them were coming towards us, finally when we got to the summit, and walked around the construction we saw that the parking lot was almost full - people had been driving around the stop sign that we diligently stopped at. So by obeying stop signs we got to take the beautiful 'expert' trail, and by driving around signs they got to take the swamped-from-construction 'short footpath,' I think we got the better bet.

Unfortunately because of the construction and obstructing trees you couldn't really get any good pictures of the view, but you could see that a good view was indeed offered in a couple directions; so I can't give you any actual Mt. Equinox summit pictures but I can tell you that the trip would be worth it.

On the way back to our car we decided to walk down the road, partly because we didn't know where a trail head was and partly because it would be quicker). It was a pretty steep downhill gradient in some parts, the kind that makes you wish you were a kid and it was a grassy hill so you could just log roll down it. The sky was clear so we could watch as some birds flew overhead, but it was by looking down that God gave us another delight: butterflies. They were everywhere on these purple plants and they stayed still long enough for me to take a few photos before we walked the rest of the way back to our lonely car (I guess no one else had decided to obey the stop sign).

I'm realizing at I type this that most of my hiking trips don't always turn out as planned.
Stay tuned for another fair weather post of a past trip,
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Hello All!

A lot has happened in the last - almost 2 years. I apologize to my few friends who have mentioned to me that I should start posting on this again.

I actually haven't gone hiking that much since my last post so there's not too much that this blog has missed out on, but I'll try to update it every month or so to keep what fun stuff I have through the winter ;) My hiking consisted basically of some foot trails that did yield some pretty cool photos that I'll get up for you.

I'll have a post up about next week of Mt. Equinox in VT.
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